The Wonderkid Files: Carlos Baleba – Brighton or Liverpool’s star of the future?
and live on Freeview channel 276
Whenever you hear that Brighton & Hove Albion are bidding for a 19-year-old, you know you should pay attention. And when you find out that Liverpool, Newcastle United, AC Milan and Juventus are all tracking their progress as well, you begin to suspect that the kid in question is pretty special – and that’s the case with Carlos Baleba.
Born in Douala, Cameroon in 2004, Baleba moved to France just last year when Lille won what had become a pretty heated race to sign him after he impressed scouts in his home country. Initially playing in the B team, he broke into the first team in the 2022/23 season and has already made 22 senior appearances for his club – during which he has blown just about everyone watching him away.
Advertisement
Advertisement
Comfortable playing as either a box-to-box midfielder or in a more conservative holding role, Baleba is pretty much the complete package. He’s a strong tackler who reads the game beautifully and cuts out passes for fun. He’s a fine passer with a wide range and impressive playmaking instincts. And he’s got enough speed and stamina to keep going for days on end, shuttling up and down the field while winning turnovers and starting up attacks for his own team.
But watching him play, the first thing that really stands out is the quality of his ball control. Baleba has fast feet and a great touch, which he uses to get himself out of crowded situations quickly and to surge past opposing midfielders with ease. His combination of speed and close control makes him a superb dribbler, and his ability to move the ball quickly to evade tackles makes him extremely press-resistant. Given the importance of pressure on holding midfielders in the modern tactical game, that attribute can be the difference between a good player and a great one, and Baleba has it in spades.
A huge talent then, albeit one with some rough edges to smooth off. He shoots extraordinarily often for a player who has yet to score a senior goal, and the fact that he makes nearly 2.5 attempts on goal per game for an average xG of 0.08 should tell you that he’s taking on too many long-range efforts. He also doesn’t have great numbers for killer final balls, and all of that points to a player who still needs to work on his decision-making and his skills around the opposition area – his ball-carrying skills mean he gets there often, but doesn’t make the right calls concerning what to do next.
He is also prone to pushing upfield at the wrong time and leaving his team vulnerable with space in behind him. The good news is that he’s incredibly good at getting back quickly to effect turnovers, but he still needs to demonstrate a little more judgement – something which could be said for almost any teenage player of course.
Advertisement
Advertisement
He’s also fairly short – he stands at about 5’9” tall – and not especially strong, so there’s a fair query about how he’d stand up to opposing players who try to bully him. Happily for Baleba, he’s good enough with his feet to evade most tackles and knows how to draw fouls already.
As for how much he’d cost, newspaper reports have wildly differing price points ranging from £15m to £26m, all of which simply tells us that there’s a lot of negotiating going on and that his price could shoot up as the competition becomes fiercer. Either way, as long as Baleba continues to develop as rapidly as he has done so far, he looks like a player whose value will be substantially higher in years to come.
Where he’ll end up is anybody’s guess, but it would be a bit of a shock if he was still in Lille in a month’s time. Brighton have proven their ability to get the best out of young players and Baleba can be assured of minutes there – but with some very big teams in the mix, you could hardly blame him if he decided to cut out the middle-man and go straight for one of the big teams, especially Liverpool given how light they are at the holding midfield position right now. He wouldn’t be too far down the pecking order at Anfield, even if Jürgen Klopp will no doubt be trying to bring other defensively-minded midfielders in as well. Wherever Baleba ends up, he looks like a serious prospect – and once he’s been taught how to make the right decisions nine times out of ten, he’ll be a force to be reckoned with.
More from The Wonderkid Files
► Ângelo
► Murillo